Ascetic monks may be the least likely folks to whip up a feast, but for nearly eight years the Hare Krishnas have been running a vegetarian restaurant called Govinda’s in the basement of their temple in Rogers Park. The setting is hardly monastic. A half block east of Clark Street, across from a bank and a Catholic church, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness is housed in a former Masonic lodge. Walk in the front door of the temple, past a line of worshipers’ shoes (you can leave yours on), and head downstairs. You’ll be greeted by Sarvopama Das, a 50-year-old Vaishnava monk wearing Levi’s and the traditional bald pate punctuated with a ponytail, or sikha. Sarvo buys the produce, answers the phone, and mans the cash register, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the restaurant. On this night he’s playing music meant to bring on the monsoon season. “I’m hoping for snow,” Sarvo says. “I want to go skiing.”
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Before becoming a follower of Swami Prabhupada (who founded the Hare Krishna movement in 1966), Sarvo was employed in a machine-parts factory in Providence, Rhode Island, and going by the name Elton Anders Hansell. The son of “devout atheist” parents, Sarvo was introduced to the tenets of Hare Krishna through reading the Bhagavad Gita. He started chanting while working on the assembly line. When he was spotted doing it by a group of plant supervisors, they were impressed by his powers of concentration and unexpectedly promoted him to their engineering department. But more money and fewer working hours did nothing to assuage his underlying dissatisfaction. “I was disenchanted,” Sarvo says. “I wanted to do more with my life than filling buckets with nuts, bolts, and screws.”
For Hare Krishnas, the slaughter of animals violates the all-encompassing law of karma, which ensures that those who cause violence and suffering in this life will have it visited back on them in the future. Meat eaters may face the misfortune of being reincarnated as an animal or bird and ending up on someone’s dinner table. Krishna Consciousness maintains that all living things are sacred–even plants–but plant eating is permitted because the nervous systems of vegetation are less developed than those of animals. To offset the karmic implications, cooks are required to first offer food to Krishna; then they may serve the leftovers. “Nothing is consumed until it’s first offered to God,” Sarvo says. Kitchens are kept scrupulously clean, and cooks must be free of all animosity when preparing the meal. “The mentality of the cook is especially absorbed into the grains. So if someone is very angry or upset, those feelings will be absorbed by whoever eats it.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Alexander Newberry.
